Feature Flag Transition & Setup Guide

A step-by-step guide for integrating LaunchDarkly into your app and adopting feature flagging best practices

You’re now at a decision point. You want to buy a feature flagging management solution, but you are not sure how difficult the switch might be. You either have an existing system in place or you’ve never tried feature flagging before.

The transition process is actually not as daunting as you think. In fact, it’s an opportunity to clean up technical debt, mitigate risk, and start deploying better software, faster. From start to finish, this guide will walk you through the process of successfully integrating LaunchDarkly into your development process.

1. New Team Member Orientation

Use the QuickStart tutorial. Create a feature flag for the platform of your choice using the step-by-step tutorial. We provide well-documented SDKs for Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Go, Node.JS, .NET, Ruby, Python Twisted, iOS, and Android.

Install LaunchDarkly in a test app. In the QuickStart section, select “Install an SDK”. Use this guide to install a simple feature flag in the test app of your choice. LaunchDarkly provides “hello-world” test apps to help you get familiar.

Check out our documentation. It’s important to understand the LaunchDarkly fundamentals. In LaunchDarkly, feature flags are evaluated in-memory using one of our SDKs. Our user interface (app.launchdarkly.com) lets you create feature flags and targeting rules that are streamed to our SDKs in real-time. You pass user objects to our SDKs, which evaluate the appropriate flag values for those users in microseconds. These feature flag events are sent asynchronously to LaunchDarkly, allowing you to easily manage users via our dashboard.

Start targeting users and playing with percentage rollouts. Go to your feature flag dashboard and select a feature flag (docs).

On the targeting tab, you can:

Target individual users

Create custom targeting rules

Manage percentage rollouts

Set a default rule

Set an off variation

Create a multivariate flag. LaunchDarkly can do more than just evaluate true and false feature flags. Create multivariate flags that have multiple flag variations. These variations can be strings, numbers, and JSON arrays/objects.

Construct a document and/or use your issue tracker to itemize the switch. This is an opportunity to implement best practices in your development and release process.

3. Separate feature flags from configuration values

Scan your application and identify your feature flags.

It’s important to understand what a feature flag is, and what it isn’t.

The primary purpose of a feature flag is to control access to a feature based on the context of a user. On the other hand, a configuration value is primarily used to configure a permanent parameter, irrespective of a user’s context.

Feature flag use cases

Roll out a new checkout flow to 1%, 10%, and 100% of your users

Toggle a new beta feature for your beta testers

Sunset a poorly performing feature

Manage a long-term state, like maintenance mode or subscription plans

Serve a new upgrade to users who live in Canada and have an Android phone

Configuration value use cases

Set the hostname for your application server

Set authentication credentials and settings for services and backend stores

Set static rate limits for your application service

Set a directory path for data storage

4. Clean up technical debt by removing old flags

Remove the feature flags you don’t want anymore

This process is an opportunity to mitigate technical debt and remove all of the clutter from the past. LaunchDarkly has flag statuses that indicate when you particular feature flags are safe for removal.

5. Identify components that you would like to flag

Now that feature flagging will be easy, you should identify components of your application or particular processes that you would like to feature flag.

LaunchDarkly supports both boolean and multivariate feature flags. Boolean flags return true and false, but multivariate flags can return strings, number, JSON objects/arrays. You should hold a brainstorming session where everyone can identify the existing components they would like to flag.

6. Setting up your feature flags

If you have existing flags, you can use LaunchDarkly’s REST API to import your existing flags.

You can also use the API to bulk create new flags or simply use the LaunchDarkly UI.

To organize and document your feature flags, LaunchDarkly lets you add a name, description, and tags to each feature flag.

You can also name and provide descriptions for variations

Your team should decide the best ways to standardize naming conventions

7. Invite your team and start releasing faster with less risk

The coordinator should onboard team members, help set up projects and environments, and ensure that permissions are properly calibrated.

Develop guidelines for what new features need to flagged and how you will use LaunchDarkly to practice feature flag-driven development

We’re here to help!

We want to make the transition fast, easy, and productive for you and your entire team. Contact us at support@launchdarkly.com and we will answer all of your questions, provide guidance, and help you get started.

As a designer who can code, Justin can empathize with a developer's workflow and design intuitive interfaces to address extremely complex functionality. He has built dozens of user interfaces for high-traffic applications — winning the Best of California IT Design award in 2012. He frequently contributes feature flag management and design theory articles to DZone, Tech.co, and DesignerHub. He holds degrees from UC Davis and USC, and is finishing an MS in Information Design at Northwestern. When he's not making developer's lives easier, he enjoys tennis, computer games, and writing.